Twenty Riddles Seimei Doesn't Want Solved
by Miiko Ashida
Summary: Nobody wants to know the truth about a dead man they want to remember him the best they can, because he will forever be no more than their words and memories. [Seimei's life, to be honest, is one big parodoxical LIE.] [SeimeixRitsuka, Soubi and Nisei]


I. Seimei was learning long division when Ritsuka was learning to walk; he was coming home with blood caked under his nails by the time his little brother could do the same.

II. As a child, Seimei wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. But in the middle of playing "hospital" with a dismembered frog on the back porch, he found himself more fascinated with the way the tiny pulses of life slowly shuddered and went out than with the prospect of letting them continue on, monotonously.

III. Soubi is easy to use, but he's harder to break because where he isn't still broken he has already healed into tough scar tissue; Seimei will have to learn to inflict a kind of wound that will just bleed and bleed and never seal up, so he can make it hurt again and again and again.

IV. They play nurse: Ritsuka is a good patient (always with a cut or a bruise or a burn or something and why can't he learn to just run?), and Seimei likes fixing him up. With Ritsuka, he doesn't have to worry that there won't be more injuries to make him come back again.

V. Occasionally, Soubi gets hurt during battles. Despite his extensive knowledge of first-aid and personal experience, he leaves Soubi to bandage his own injuries.

VI. They kill a fighter/sacrifice pair whose name doesn't matter, and Seimei makes sure to get all the blood off himself before he goes home to tuck Ritsuka into bed.

VII. "A good son," screams Mother when she can't swipe at Ritsuka anymore because her older son is in the way again, "would stay the same for me!" A good mother, Seimei thinks acerbically, would be able to tell which child is pure and which is the demon.

VIII. Once Seimei had to go to the hospital and he almost caught himself thinking whether he would be one of those people who didn't come back out.

IX. People touching Seimei's things -- schoolbooks, clothes, Soubi -- irritates him. When Mother touches Ritsuka, whether hitting him or just reaching for a shred of the-child-who-once-was, Seimei's veins burn with something he supposes would be rage in a lesser person.

X. Seimei knows that beautiful things are always broken in some way; Ritsuka, Soubi, even Mother; and he'd never admit it, but that truth makes him shiver. Because Seimei knows he's beautiful, but it's an uneasy feeling that he can only wonder in what way he might be broken.

XI. The old Ritsuka had loved candy bars; the new one snacked continually on apples; Seimei was the only one who bought apples for the new Ritsuka just as he had given candy to the old. He'd never insisted on healthier foods when Ritsuka was a junk food-addict, and he never pushed old favorites on someone who now liked something else just to feed his own need for comforting familiarity.

XII. Everything is crawling with filth and corruption and some days Seimei feels like reducing it all to acrid smoke and grey powder underfoot.

XIII. The woman's hair ripped out easily in his hands, big chunks and she screamed and screamed and usually he wouldn't do something as coarse as that but God had she been vain so he wanted to pay her back appropriately for her sins, and for some reason he thinks about this as his fingers (now clean of the blood from before) comb gently through Ritsuka's hair, which is wet from the bath and conditioned to keep it from hurting too much when it's combed. He nearly wonders if he might be going a little crazy.

XIV. He doesn't trust Nisei (Nisei with his ears long gone, his liar's smile, his double-meanings), but he is not afraid of him. There is not much that Seimei fears.

XV. "I'll tell only you," he says, and he can see how his words entrance the boy; it's a lie like all the others (I love you, I'll protect you, I'll always be here with you) but he feels almost bad about telling it, so that must make it worth something.

XVI. "You will live for him. Love him." The words are hissed with passion, something Seimei has rarely felt before and never shown; he is inadvertently giving Soubi the greatest gift possible: an order to live like his master did, to love the same soul. It is as close as they could ever get.

XVII. Seimei typed a letter on his computer, locked the file with a word he hated, and went to the sliding glass door where his twiceover betrayal stood, looking like what he might have loved and what he'd never finished using both put together and empty of anything like either of them, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Nisei was neither selflessly devoted nor pure and breakable, so he wasn't any sort of threat.

XVIII. Ritsuka was sleeping when he left, and there was no kiss goodbye.

XIX. Nisei was there with him as they watched the corpse that wasn't his burn, but Seimei lit the match.

XX. "Kill him for me," commands Seimei, a little of the hysteria showing in his voice. He isn't quite sure anymore who he's talking to, or who he gave the order about, but whoever dies here it will be some sort of a release for him. He secretly hopes all three of the others walk away.


End file.
